Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/840

Rh 816 P K O P H E T learn that they soon had an established footing in Israel, and that the prophets came to be recognized as a standing sacred element in society. 1 r hat was their precise place in Hebrew life we hardly know, but they formed at least a religious class which in all its traditions represented the new national and not the old communal and particularistic life. One characteristic point which appears very early is that they felt themselves called upon to vindicate the laws of divine righteousness in national matters, and especially in the conduct of the kings, who were not answerable to human authority. The cases of Nathan and David in the matter of Uriah, of Elijah and Ahab after the judicial murder of Naboth, will occur to every one, and from the Hebrew standpoint the action of Gad in the matter of the census taken by David belongs to the same category. Such interventions with an Eastern king demanded great moral courage, for, though to some extent protected by their sacred character, the persons of the prophets were by no means legally inviolable (1 Kings xix. 2 ; xxii. 27 ; 2 Kings vi. 31). Another point of the first importance in the development of the class was the absorption into it of the old seers, which, as we have already seen, must have occurred comparatively early. The great prophecy of Nathan (2 Sam. vii.) is of too disputed a date to be cited in evidence, but already in David s time we find that Gad the ndbi is also the king s seer (2 Sam. xxiv. 11 ; comp. 1 Sam. xxii. 5), and by and by it comes to be clearly understood that the prophets are the appointed organ of Jehovah s communications with His people or His king. The rise of this function of the prophets is plainly parallel with the change which took place under the kings in the position of the priestly oracle ; the Torah of the priests now dealt rather with permanent sacred ordinances than with the giving of new divine counsel for special occasions. Jehovah s ever-present kingship in Israel, which was the chief religious idea brought into promin ence by the national revival, demanded a more continuous manifestation of His revealing spirit than was given either by the priestly lot or by the rise of occasional seers ; and where could -this be sought except among the prophets 1 It does not of course follow that every one who had shared in the divine afflatus of prophetic enthusiasm gave forth oracles; but the prophets as a class stood nearer than other men to the mysterious workings of Jehovah, and it was in their circle that revelation seemed to have its natural home. A most instructive passage in this respect is 1 Kings xxii., where we find some four hundred pro phets gathered together round the king, and where it is clear that Jehoshaphat was equally convinced, on the one hand that the word of Jehovah could be found among the prophets, and on the other that it was very probable that some or even the mass of them might be no better than liars. And here it is to be observed that Micaiah, who proved the true prophet, does not accuse the others of conscious imposture; he admits that they speak under the influence of a spirit proceeding from Jehovah, but it is a lying spirit sent to deceive. The sublime and solitary figure of Elijah, whom we are apt to take as the typical figure of a prophet in the old kingdom, has little in com mon with the picture even of the true prophet which we derive from 1 Kings xxii. ; and when his history is care fully and critically read it is found to give no reason to think that he stood in any close relation to the prophetic societies of his time. He is a man of God like Moses and Samuel, a man admitted to a strange and awful intimacy with the Most High, and like them he combines functions which in later times were distributed between prophet and priest. The fundamental idea that Jehovah guides His people by the word of revelation is older than the separa tion of special classes of theocratic organs ; Moses indeed is not only prophet and priest but judge and ruler. But as the history goes on the prophet stands out more and more as the typical organ of revelation, the type of the man who is Jehovah s intimate, sharing His secrets (Amos ii. 7 ; Jer. xxiii. 22), and ministering to Israel the gracious guidance which distinguishes it from all other nations (Amos ii. 11; Hosea xii. 10, 13), and also the sentences of awful judgment by which Jehovah rebukes rebellion (Hos. vi. 5). The full development of this view seems to lie between the time of Elijah and that of Amos and Hosea, under the dynasty of Jehu, when prophecy, as represented by Elisha and Jonah, stood in the fullest harmony with the patriotic efforts of the age. This growth in the conception of the prophetic function is reflected in parts of the Pentateuch which may be dated with probability as belonging to the period just named ; the name of nabl is extended to the patriarchs as Jehovah s intimates (Gen. xx. 7), and Moses begins to be chiefly looked at as the greatest of prophets (Num. xi. xii. ; Deut. xxxiv. 10), while Aaron and Miriam are also placed in the same class (Exod. xv. 20; Num. xii.) because they too are among the divinely favoured leaders of Israel (comp. Micah vi. 4). 1 Elisha, the successor of Elijah, stood in much closer relations to the prophetic societies than his great master had done. As a man of practical aims he required a circle through which to work, and he found this among the prophets, or, as they are now called, the sons of the prophets. According to Semitic idiom &quot; sons of the pro phets&quot; most naturally means &quot;members of a prophetic corporation,&quot; 2 which may imply that under the headship of Elisha and the favour of the dynasty of Jehu, which owed much to Elisha and his party, the prophetic societies took a more regular form than before. The accounts we have certainly point in this direction, and it is character istic that in 2 Kings iv. 42 first fruits are paid to Elisha. But to an institution like prophecy national recognition, royal favour, and fixed organization are dangerous gifts. It has always been the evil fate of the Hebrews to destroy their own highest ideals by attempting to translate them into set forms, and the ideal of a prophetic guidance of the nation of Jehovah could not have been more effectu ally neutralized than by committing its realization to the kind of state church of professional prophets, &quot;eating bread&quot; by their trade (Amos vii. 12), 3 which claimed to inherit the traditions of Elijah and Elisha. The sons of the prophets appear to have been grouped round the lead ing sanctuaries, Gilgal, Bethel, and the like (comp. Hos. ix. 8), and to have stood in pretty close relation to the priesthood (Hos. iv. 5), though this comes out more clearly 1 None of these passages belong to the very oldest thread of Penta- teuchal story, and similarly Deborah is called prophetess only in the later account (Jud. iv. 4), not in the song (Jud. v.). It is character istic that in Num. xi. the elders who receive a share in Moses s task also receive a share of his prophetic spirit (comp. the parallel 2 Kings ii. 9 sq.). In the older account (Exod. xviii.) this is not so. Again Moses differs from all other prophets in that Jehovah speaks to him face to face, and he sees the similitude of Jehovah. This is in fact the difference between him and Elijah (comp. Exod. xxxiii. 8-11 with 1 Kings xix. 13), but not between him and the great prophets of the 8th century (Isa. vi. 5). That prophecy was generally given in visions, dreams, and obscure sentences is true only of an early period. Amos still has frequent visions of a more or less enigmatic character, as Micaiah had, but there is little trace of this in the great prophets after him. On the psychological reasons for this see W. R. Smith, Prophets of Israel (1882), p. 221 sq. 2 See G. Hoffmann, Kirchenmrsammlung zu Ephcsus (1873), p, 89. 3 Those who consulted the old seers were expected to make a pre sent, 1 Sam. ir. 7 (Arabic holwanu- l-kdhin ; comp. Bokhari, iv. 219). Similar presents were brought to the older prophets (1 Kings xiv. 3), and first fruits were sometimes paid to a man of God ; but the suc cessors of Amos share his contempt for those who traded ou their oracles (Mic. iii. 5 sq.).